Courtnie stared at the open cell, uncomprehending.  It was open.  Open.  And there was no one in it.  Why was there no one in it?  Where had she gone?

And just like that, after the question barely scraped her mind, Courtnie screamed.  She screamed so loudly that the screams in the prison cells stopped and she was the only one left.  They all stared at her from inside their cages, all secretly loved the emotions coursing through Courtnie’s body.  Courtnie slid to the ground, her eyes wide.  She was gone.  She was gone.

But—how?

“Fortis,” Courtnie whispered.  She didn’t want to believe it, but what other choice did she have?  Could Fortis have let her out?  “Fortis.”

Courtnie drew herself from the ground and glowered at the empty cell.  It mocked her.  Now that she was free there was no saying what she could do. . . .

Ignoring the hateful stares all around her, Courtnie stormed out of the room, her hands curled into fists at her sides.  Infuriation at a level that Courtnie didn’t even think possible swam through her, threatening to drown her.  All she could see was her hands around Fortis’ throat, strangling him until his eyes were cool and lifeless.  And then she’d go after her.  She would find her and kill her like she should have when she first came to the prison wards.

Courtnie made her way through the halls, toward the boy’s sector.  It wasn’t far away from the prison wards, so it didn’t take that long.  “Fortis!” Courtnie screeched as she entered the boy’s sector.  Fortis’s office wasn’t too far away now.  “Fortis I know you’re over here!”

Fortis appeared at the end of the hall, his eyes wide.  Innocence dripped off of him, seeping into the floorboards and falling into the room below.  But Courtnie knew that it was all a trick.  He wasn’t innocent.  No.  He was just as guilty as she was.  “What’s going on?” he demanded.  “You weren’t visiting her again were you?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want me to would you?” Courtnie seethed, her feet stomping on the floor as she made her way toward her brother.  “You did this, you son of a—”

“Courtnie, stop,” Fortis said softly grabbing ahold of her shoulders.  In her anger Courtnie hadn’t realized how close she’d come to her brother.  She brought her fist up to punch him, but he caught it easily, bringing her hand back down to her side.  “Now, what’s going on?”

“You set her free,” Courtnie hissed, throwing her fist up again.  Fortis caught it again and threw it away from him.  “You let her go, Fortis.”

“Let who go?” Fortis demanded, his eyes wide.

“Oh don’t act like you don’t know,” Courtnie barked, her nails digging into her palm now.  She wanted to hit him so badly, but she knew that Fortis would only block her attack.  “You let her go and now I’m going to kill you.”

“Let who go?” Fortis shouted, his hands flying into the air.  “Courtnie, I have no idea what you’re talking—”

“Terra!” Courtnie screeched, the name like acid on her throat.  She hated saying her name so much—so much.  But there was nothing she could do about it now.  “You let Terra free, you jackass!  And now that’s she’s free she’s going to ruin everything.”

Fortis’s mouth dropped, and for a moment Courtnie thought he was going to faint.  But he didn’t.  Instead he closed his mouth and took a step back from her, his eyes threatening to fall out of their sockets as they bulged.  “She’s—she’s gone?”

“Yes,” Courtnie said icily, “she’s gone.”

“Courtnie.”  Fortis stared at her intently, and Courtnie could see legitimate shock in his eyes.  He had no idea that any of this happened, Courtnie realized.  He wasn’t the one behind this.  “I didn’t let her out.”

Courtnie suddenly felt sick to her stomach.  “Then,” she whispered, “who did?”

The | Gate

“We want the whole story.”

Faye’s eyes glided toward her sister as she sat on the shay lounge of Kole’s living room.  Terra seemed so at ease, she observed.  How was it that she was able to enter an alien place and act as though it happened every day?  Then again, maybe this place wasn’t alien to Terra at all.  Maybe she’d been on the boy’s side numerous times, so many that she lost count.

But, still.  When Faye first came to Kole’s house she’d been beyond nervous.  Terra acted as though she was sitting in her own living room.  This was one of the many, many things that Faye admired about Terra.  Her ability to go through everything without even blinking.  To have so much strength.

“Don’t skip over any details,” Alex continued from his spot at the head of the room.  He was standing, his arms crossed over his chest.  He seemed to be taking a protective stance, as though he was trying to keep something safe.  Faye wondered if this his big brotherly way of making sure Kole didn’t get into any more trouble than he needed to be.  Probably.

“Didn’t plan on it,” Terra said, her tone light.  Her lips tilted into a smile as she regarded Alex.  If he was trying to intimidate her, it definitely wasn’t working.  “Don’t worry, you can trust me.”

“We’ll see about that,” Seth muttered.  He was seated on cushion furthest away from Faye, his hands curled into fists beside him.  Terence and Zander sat next to him.  Faye’s eyes moved over to Kole, where he stood next to his brother.  He caught her gaze and smiled.  She smiled back.

Terra sighed deeply, rolling her eyes and standing up.  She gestured for Alex and Kole to sit down, saying, “You might as well sit down.  This is going to take a while.”

Alex and Kole glanced at each other before shrugging, coming over to sit beside Faye and Errika on the couch.  Kole perched next to Faye, his shoulders brushing hers as they crowded together on the shay lounge.  Faye couldn’t help but feel happy that Kole chose to sit by her instead of anyone else in the room.  Her stomach did an odd flip at the thought.

“So, as you know, I’m Terra,” Terra said, her hands shoved into her pockets.  Faye would have been so nervous facing a group of people like she was, so pressured to say the right thing.  But Terra didn’t seem to care at all.  “The girl who was supposed to be dead for the past seven years.”

Faye stared at her sister as she spoke.  She could not explain how amazing it felt to have her sister back in her life, to be given a second chance.  No matter how many times she repeated it over and over in her mind, Faye still couldn’t believe it.  That after all this time Terra had been so close when she’d seemed so far away.

“This is what happened,” Terra said.

The | Gate

“When I was in high school I met a girl named Daneigh.  We looked exactly alike and we didn’t know why.  How was it possible to have someone look exactly like you?  It just didn’t make any sense.  I immediately knew something was up.  The whole ‘beast on the other side of the Gate’ always seemed like bullshit to me, but now I knew it was.

“Something was going on, and I was going to find out what.  I told Daneigh that we needed to find out what the hell was going on because this just wasn’t normal.  It took a long time to convince her, but I did.  She finally agreed to help me, and we started our plan to infiltrate the Government building.

“First we needed to get on the other side.  There was no point in trying to get to the Government building if we couldn’t even make it to the other side of the Gate without getting caught.  Daneigh didn’t think that we should try to go over the Gate, that we’d only get ourselves arrested.  And that gave me an idea.  If we got ourselves arrested then we’d be able to get inside the Government building without looking suspicious.

“Daneigh flat out told me no to that plan, and I understood why.  It was risking too much to get arrested, to bank on getting away from the officers and back home without endangering ourselves at all.  I had Faye and my mom to take care of, and she had her family to take care of.  So that was out of the question.

“While we tried to think of another plan, we researched in libraries and talked to people we knew worked at the Government building.  Of course we got nothing.  The Government isn’t stupid enough to leave information lying around, and the workers have to pledge secrecy if they’re to stay at home while they work there.  Only one or two workers get to work at home.  And I’ve come to realize that they only get to work at home because they no absolutely nothing about what goes on inside.  They’ve just been fed lies.

“Daneigh and I needed to do something, and we needed to do it fast.  It wasn’t going to be long before my mom was going to question how I was acting, or catch me and Daneigh together.  So we decided that we were going to sneak onto the other side of the Gate. 

“We did it at night, so the cameras couldn’t track us.  It took us hours because we moved slowly, carefully, so it would be less likely for the people watching the cameras to notice us.  It obviously worked, because the next thing we knew we were on the other side and standing in a city nearly identical to our own.

“We walked around, looking for any answers that could be given to us.  We found creatures that were much like us—boys.  We instantly knew that the Government had screwed us all over, that they were planning something that definitely wasn’t for the greater good of Cesve.

“We went to the Government building that same night. 

“It was harder getting to the Government building than it was the other side.  We had no idea where it was, let alone how to get there.  So we just walked aimlessly, knowing that wherever we were going have to lead to somewhere.

“And it did.  We got to the Government building and went inside.  It was there were I first made the blueprints that you used in order to get through the building safely.  I found a copy of them in Courtnie’s office and traced them on a piece of printer paper.  Daneigh kept a look out at the door, making sure that Courtnie didn’t come and find us.

“We got caught by one of the workers—Miranda, Faye, you met her.  She didn’t suspect anything at all.  She was never really the smartest person in the world.  I doubt that she even remembers that night.  She just looked between us and demanded to know if we were the new maids, and if we had to look like each other as a uniform.  We told her that we were, and that was that.  I finished tracing the blueprint and then we hurried out of the office.  We did a little more looking around, using the blueprint, and then we left.  While we wanted to bring the Government down quickly, it would be stupid to start a rebellion without thinking it through.

“So we formulated a plan.  First, we would find a way to take down the cameras.  And then, after that, more people would be able to go over to the other side and see the truth behind the Government’s lies.  And then we would take over the video broadcasts.  Without their broadcasts and their cameras they were completely powerless.

“There was just one problem in our plan: We had no idea what to do.  So, we needed to go back to the Government building.  And we did.  There we collected more information about how the cameras worked.  We were there all night, sneaking around while the guards were gone.  We found out exactly how to take the cameras and the voice broadcasts down.  It wasn’t hard at all.  All that was needed was a virus, a transport, and a hacking. 

“We were about to leave in the morning when we got caught again.  This time it was by one of the guards, who were not as gullible as Miranda.  He took us by our arms and dragged us to Courtnie, where she instantly recognized us.  She had us sent to the prison wards.

“But we weren’t going to have it that easy.  Before Courtnie had us sent to the prison wards, she called in Fortis.  He stared at us, his mouth slack with surprise.  I can see it like it was yesterday.  The utter disbelief that we were standing before him.  Daneigh and I didn’t understand at first, why he was staring at us like that, but then Courtnie explained—well in the way that she explains.  Which means not at all.

“’I’d like you to meet your daughters, Fortis,’ Courtnie had said, a smirk tilting on her lips.  It was so triumphant, so filled with glee.  I hadn’t understood why.  But now I realize that she’d warned Fortis about us from the beginning, tried to get him to keep us separated.  He’d insisted that we both get to live a ‘normal’ life in Cesve.  Live on the opposite sides of the city so that we’d be less likely to meet.  Obviously Courtnie was glad that she’d proved him wrong.

“Daneigh demanded to know what Courtnie meant by us being his daughter, us being related at all.  At the time we hadn’t realized what we were, that they even existed.  We hadn’t known about the files on Courtnie’s laptop with the lists of all of the true blood relatives in Cesve.

“It was then that we learned that we were siblings—twins actually.  We shared the same blood, and Fortis was our father.  Every girl has one—a father.  And every boy has a mother.  It was then that I learned that I was not blood related to anyone that I really considered family.  My real family (besides Daneigh of course), was evil, plotting.

“And I was going to take them down.

“After Courtnie was done gloating, she gestured for the guards to take us away.  It was then that I realized that we only had one hope of getting out.  I curled over on myself, crying out in pain.  I started hyperventilating, begging for them to stop the pain.  Daneigh joined in a moment later, and soon enough we were both curled on the floor, pretending to be deathly sick when we weren’t.

“Courtnie knew we were faking, but when we insisted that it must have been food poisoning, Fortis demanded that we get checked out by the hospital care unit they had downstairs.  It was because he cared that we were able to get away.  When the nurse went to go set us in a bed, Daneigh and I lashed out, knocking them out with the wooden visitor’s chair next to one of the beds.

“And then we were running.  We ran out of the building and through the woods, not caring if they noticed that we were leaving or not.  We couldn’t afford to go slow anymore.  We ran, and for one night, we were safe.

“The next day guards showed up to our house while Faye and our mom were still sleeping.  They were being so loud that I feared they were going to wake them up.  So I went outside, and they tried to grab me.  I got away, though, and then I was running again.  This time I was hurrying for Daneigh’s house.  I needed to warn Daneigh, to give her a chance to run.

“But I was wrong to try and get to her.  The guards were on my heels, and by the time I got to the house, they were trying to grab her, too.  We were both running, and in the end we ended up by a cliff’s edge.  Stereotypical, cliché, whatever you want to call it, but that’s how it was.  We were trapped.

“I don’t know what made Daneigh do it.  But while we were standing there, watching the guards close in on us, she whispered, ‘I won’t go to the prison wards.  I’m sorry, Terra.’  And then she was gone.  She threw herself off the cliff’s edge, disappearing below.

“I screamed her name I don’t know how many times.  But even when the guard’s got me, I screamed for them to help her, to save her before she hurt herself.  I told them to let me go, that I had to go see if she was all right.  It was ridiculous, of course—to do that.  Daneigh was gone.  And she wasn’t coming back.”

The | Gate

Terra sighed shakily, her story coming to a close as she wiped a hand across her face.  Faye could see that telling it had pained her, and that she was trying very hard not to cry right now.  The sudden want, the need to hug her right now almost consumed Faye whole.  But Faye stayed where she was, unmoving.  Terra wouldn’t want her to hug her.  Even when Faye was little and tried to console Terra when she was upset, Terra would push her away and smile, promising that everything was okay.

But nothing was really okay anymore, was it?

“So the body Faye saw,” Errika murmured softly, her eyes wide.  She, like the rest of them, could not believe what she’d just heard.  “It was Daneigh’s.  Not yours.”

Terra nodded, bringing a hand through her hair before letting it fall completely.  “They hadn’t expected Daneigh to do what she did, but they took advantage of it.  They had Daneigh’s family come first to see the body, and then they sent Mom over.  There’s no one in my grave in the graveyard.  It’s empty.”

Faye gulped, her eyes watering.  For so many years she’d visited Terra’s grave, set flowers in front of it hoping that in some way Terra got them.  But this whole time Terra hadn’t been there, hadn’t been watching over her.  She’d been locked away, trapped and trying to get out.

Terra crossed her arms over her chest, and her eyes connected with Faye’s.  They were full of remorse, regret, and apology.  She blamed herself for Daneigh’s death, Faye realized.  For the past seven years she’d thought that Daneigh would be alive if it hadn’t been for her.  “I continued on with the plan from the inside,” Terra said softly.  “I got Miranda to agree to help me—which wasn’t that hard.  She’d been told by Courtnie to come collect some of the prisoners for the health class, and that’s when I got to her.  She wanted to know my name, but I couldn’t risk her accidentally telling anyone.  Courtnie would have me killed on the spot.

“I had Miranda shut the cameras down with the file on my flash drive, and it gave me total control of the cameras.  I saw Kole, and I saw Faye meet each other at the Gate’s borders.  I saw all of their visits, and I saw you guys coming to the building.  I didn’t know that it was Faye and Errika, though.”  Her lips tilted into a smile.  “Ironic, isn’t it, that my baby sister followed in my footsteps?”

Faye felt herself smile.  For so many years she’d wanted to be like Terra, to succeed like she had.  She’d spent so much time thinking about how different they were that she didn’t see their similarities. 

Terra sighed deeply.  “That’s my story,” she said, her tone making it obvious that she was tired of the heavy atmosphere.  The deepness of her story, of what happened to her and Daneigh weighed down on them all.  Faye was surprised that she could breathe.  “That’s what happened.  Now, please tell me that you have chips here.  I haven’t had a potato chip in seven years.”

Faye snorted out a laugh as Terra turned to Alex, her eyes expectant.  He stared at her in a way that told Faye that he thought Terra was kidding.  But she wasn’t.  “Hello?” Terra asked, cocking an eyebrow.  “Do you have chips or not?”

Alex blinked, and he cleared his throat.  “Yeah,” he mumbled, bringing a hand through his hair.  His eyes held a distant fascination for her sister.  Faye didn’t know how she felt about that.  “In the kitchen.  This way.”

Terra grinned as Alex led the way out of the room.  She winked at Faye before saying in a sing-song voice, “Thank you!”